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Kamotaro Itou

The difference between strengths and weaknesses is only a thin line.

Created on 2009-04-09 13:49:40 (#19447606), last updated 2009-08-12

291 comments received, 1,601 comments posted

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22 Journal Entries, 31 Tags, 1 Memory, 0 Virtual Gifts, 30 Userpics

Basic Info

Birthdate:	08-01
Location:	Japan

Bio

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« Kamotaro Itou »

CHARACTER INFORMATION-
Canon Character and Series: Kamotaro Itou from Gintama, Shinsengumi Rebellion Arc.
In-Game Name: Lt. Commander Kamotaro Itou
Age: 29 30
Gender: Male
Position & Ship: Navigator on the Victoria II.

Appearance:
Itou seems like one of those ideal, clean-faced soldiers that the Ivonian military should be made of – a blond, green-eyed stalk of a man, wears thick-rimmed glasses, always impeccably dressed in uniform, straight-backed, stern, and proper in every way. His mannerisms indicate that he is confident in what he does, and there is no hesitation in his actions. Many think that he’s a ‘genuine’ person for his unending passion for his beliefs, and the sincerity he puts into what he says and what he does.

Physically, Itou is medium in height – 176cm – and is broad-shouldered and fit. If he’s not wearing his uniform, then chances are that it’s not Itou at all; the man seems to pride himself in being a good representative of his organization, and indeed, when it comes to Ivonian loyalty, few can match his zeal in public.

People will also easily notice that he’s glued tight to that network device of his, and is always seen with the thing wherever he goes.

Personality:
Outwardly, Itou is usually seen as a calm, helpful, and friendly enough individual who generally leaves a good impression wherever he goes. His former officers viewed him as an efficient, intelligent soldier, while most of his subordinates thought he was smart and very motivated. Itou as an officer himself is very hands on, and goes out of his way to be actively involved in whatever is happening around him, especially if they involve his peers and subordinates.

He seems like a naïve idealist when someone first talks to him, but the person will quickly find out that Itou has a good head on his shoulders, and that he actually does have a bite. He doesn’t pretend to be friendly all the time: he’s good at politicking, arguing with enemies, and can be stern to the point of being harsh. Itou can be blunt and straightforward, and because of his clean records and rank, his words usually have weight whether people like it or not, and he commands this respect. In fact, it can be said that he’s actually a strangely, frighteningly practical person, and his ideas may sometimes seem horrific. If there is a problem, Itou is quick to give his suggestion, and usually, it’s the most efficient, plausible answer regardless of if it’s the best or not.

The very core of it, though, is that Itou is always judging people and finding them lacking. He is very, very arrogant, thinks that most everyone is unworthy of his attention, and that people are just pawns to be used. In fact, he can be smug toward people he doesn’t find very useful to himself.

Itou has a lot of pent up rage and obsession in him that he uses to keep himself focused on his goal, which is to say that he is VERY focused on his goals. If he wants something, he will plan, obsess, and strategize like nothing to get it. Needless to say, Itou can be very ruthless.

In order to achieve these said goals, the first thing he had to do was build networks and connections as he rose up in rank over the years. To do this, he acts the way he does around important people to gain their trust and dependence. The way he walks, talks, and acts are all deliberate to indicate that – more than being effective – he is also reliable. In short, someone you can trust to make the right decisions and do the right things. Unfortunately, he can never completely pull off the nice guy act because of his own biases, but he makes it so that he comes off no-nonsense – but still trustworthy – to most others instead.

Abilities/Weapons:
Itou has a reputation for being a genius – top grades and a scholarship in the Academy, master of the Hokutou Ittou sword style, and a steady career in the Ivonian military. More than genius, though, many of his achievements are from plain hard work… with an unhealthy dash of obsession.

Itou is a good strategist, and has taken it upon himself to learn at least the basics of most functions in a ship, especially those concerning technology. He knows a spot of radio operations, is more than familiar with navigation and navigation equipment, and can handle operating the big guns aboard an airship. More than that, he is a formidable swordsman and has a quick mind in and out of battle. However, despite his battle prowess, most people believe him more suited to administration life because of his ability at politics and his sometimes-radical ideas for change and improvement.

His real strength, though, lies in information gathering, people manipulation, and cunning. Because he has a good grasp of technology, he has been studying the network extensively since it came out in order to find ways to hack what can be hacked, and make unhackable information posts, himself. This puts him in a position to actively hear and see more than the usual person, and use this information to his advantage.

Itou is a good enough actor that he does not have trouble getting normal people to warm up to him and eventually trust him with information he may need. He’s also a very successful liar.

Note on the Hokuto Ittou style: This complicated sword style works with human flexibility and agility instead of strength. A person is required to come into closer contact with his target more than the usual sword style and, aside from his sword, use the other parts of his body as a weapon. One will find the Hokuto Ittou practitioner a formidable opponent because while they lose the extra range their sword should give them, they are able to attack quickly and from many points at once while using the length of their blades to their advantage.

The masters of the art are resourceful (often sneaky), are able to deal lethal blows in very few, effortless moves, and can use their enemy’s strength against them. It is, in effect, the combination of sword handling with martial arts. While the style is far from being the best and most lethal, it does claim to produce swordsmen who can last longest in battles, and is a style that offers the most (nasty) surprises.

How well can your character hack?:
Very well. Itou, like was said in his abilities, is very good with technology and has strived hard to learn as much as he can of the workings of the network. Itou takes painstaking effort into checking relevant journals to see if they have any new filtered posts, and will even go as far as checking for filtered comments and replies. He can hack up to the medium-hard level of security.

Weaknesses:
His first major weakness is that… he’s not actually a genius. The truth of it is that he’s a very hard, obsessive worker. While he does have talents (swordsmanship being one), many of the things that he appears good at to the public actually don’t come easily to him, and he has to put a lot of effort into keeping the impression and image up. He’s not a people-person and he’s definitely not naturally charming – while this façade holds up well enough, it cracks more often than he would like. In fact, he’s pissed off his own handful of people already. Fortunately, they were all unimportant to his plans.

Basically, he always has a heavy weight on his shoulders, and he can never relax.

Itou cannot use magic at all. Fighting in the battlefield is all about his sword and his wit, and while these two are usually enough to get by, he certainly won’t be able to do anything if someone blasts him with ki. At the end of the day, he’s still just a regular human being with very human physical limitations. His strength and stamina are a little better than the normal man because of constant training and physical fitness, but he’s not capable of superhuman feats at all. For example, he can hack off a person’s head or limbs, but he can’t cut doors or large furniture or even bodies in half. Also, he’s nearsighted (20/300).

His style also has its own weaknesses. Since it requires Itou to come into closer range of his enemies than any other sword style would, it puts him in bigger danger of getting hurt by his enemies, and makes it harder for him to maneuver out of a fight. Aside from that, the sword style can also be painful to use, considering that he uses his own body parts as weapons as much as the sword. Contrary to popular belief, punching another person is not at all painless to the one doing the punching, and Itou can go home with intense bruises from long and difficult battles.

His other major weakness is his emotional ability. To say that he’s driven is being kind – Itou is obsessed with his goal and will do anything to get to it. What he doesn’t understand in himself is that the basis of his abandonment and acknowledgment issues, megalomania, obsession, and all of his complexes is plain loneliness. Many of the things he does are bred from the fact that he couldn’t relate well with others and his own denial of his own faults.

His pride is another problem, one that he ironically has too much pride to resolve in himself. Kamotaro Itou is the kind of person who will not settle for anything less than the very top.

History:
Kamotaro Itou is the second son to the Itou family, a rich family that prospered in a small provincial town called Isling town, somewhere between Bellcius, Melior, and Solare, very near the river. The family owned Itou Transport Inc., which was in the business of transporting people and goods from one city to the other, and was generally successful in this regard.

While Kamotaro Itou himself was a very fit and hardworking boy, his older brother, Takahisa, fell to illness and disease when they were very young. His only memory of his brother is of Takahisa in bed, weak and barely able to do anything but sleep. Unfortunately, his mother favored Takahisa over Kamotaro, and while the younger Itou didn’t mind this so much because he also liked his brother, it pained him that his mother would not give him any attention at all.

This was where it started: Kamotaro found himself working harder and harder so that the important people in his life would look at him. He had the best grades in school, the highest rank among his peers in the local dojo, and all of his teachers admired him for his so-called genius. What he didn’t understand was that his excellence would drive his peers to shun and even hate him, and for his mother to resent him for being healthy when his brother was not. His mother saw him as everything Takahisa could have been, and he once even overheard her say that he should have just not been born.

Eventually, he became exceptional enough to be sent to Bellcius on scholarship to study in the academy and master the famous Hokuto Ittou style. Like in his province, he also excelled in both of these because of his hard work, and eventually graduated to join the military at the age of nineteen. Itou joined a major campaign and came out victorious, urging his quick promotion and what everyone saw as the start of his rapid growth in career.

The one consistent thing about Itou was that no matter where he went, he was never fully recognized and appreciated by his peers for his caliber even though he put his best efforts into it. His officers approved of him, he gave his best and excelled in many things, so why was it still difficult to get along with his peers? Clearly, there was something wrong with them, and they were unworthy of his attention. He felt that no one understood him, and because of that, he decided that the next best thing was for people to acknowledge him. This became his driving force – his obsession – up until now. And what better way to gain acknowledgment than by rising up the army that he had joined and becoming a cornerstone of Ivonian military, eventually having the military sit at his palm?

However, he didn’t quite know how to effectively go about doing this. He knew that hard work alone would not be enough to rise in a corrupt and political environment like the army. Itou slowed down his career by the time he was a lieutenant so he wouldn’t stand out too much, biding time as he gathered his network and figured out how to go about his goals, only knowing that having contacts would help. He could be a rank higher than his peers by now, given his genius, but he made sure that his rise in rank in the military was as average as average could go for a long while, making up for it with exceptionally clean records.

It was then that he was encouraged by a close confidante, and he started working harder to rise in the ranks, seemingly with new-found passion for his work.

« Disclaimers »

Kamotaro Itou is a fictional character from the anime/manga series Gintama. This account is a roleplaying journal for the roleplaying game